


Twist The Sinews Of Thy Heart

by LadyShadowphyre



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Also Tigers, Apologies to William Blake, But Not Like Castiel, Castiel Has Second-Hand Hell Damage, Castiel Is A Sneaky Angel, Dean Needs A Claretin Tablet, Dean Ships It, Discussion of Clothes-Sharing, Fluffy Sastiel, M/M, No Actual Tigers Were Harmed In The Making Of This Fic, Non-Expicit Nudity, Not Pets, Not That He Probably Cares Much What I've Done With His Poem, SO FLUFFY, Sam Has Patience, Support Tiger Conservation, Tigers Are Wild Animals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 15:03:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11694165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyShadowphyre/pseuds/LadyShadowphyre
Summary: Sam knew it was going to be one ofthosenights when Dean opened the hotel room, took one look inside, and then turned around and stalked back to the car with a "you deal with this" thrown over his shoulder. He had to admit, though, that this was definitely a new one....





	Twist The Sinews Of Thy Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zetal (Rodinia)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rodinia/gifts).



> Turns out, I am totally willing to bribe awesome authors with fic. Also turns out, it works! XD Enjoy your "fluffy Sastiel with tiger"!

**T** HERE WERE DAYS, now that Castiel was recovering from having taken on Sam's memories of Hell, where the Angel of the Lord was... different. Oh, he'd always been different, somehow noticeably  _ other _ than human, at least to Sam's perception, but since his stint with amnesia he'd gotten a lot better at faking being human, if occasionally a bit "quirky". And then there were days when the borrowed wounds on his psyche pushed the angel to what Dean called "fruit loop territory", behaving almost animalistic at times. Sam hadn't been there to see it, but Dean had ranted for long enough about the time he'd called for Castiel and the angel had appeared on the hood of the Impala, stark naked and covered in bees.

Sam knew it was going to be one of  _ those _ nights when Dean opened the hotel room, took one look inside, and then turned around and stalked back to the car with a "you deal with this" thrown over his shoulder. Silently cursing Dean for being a coward, Sam cautiously stepped forward and peered into the room, eyes searching out whatever had prompted his brother's rapid retreat. Castiel was there, as Sam had halfway expected. He was also naked, which Sam had not been expecting, but also didn't find terribly surprising under the circumstances.

What did surprise him, however, was the pile of fur resting on top of the blanket in the middle of Sam's bed, as did the way Castiel had curled up on his side facing the door with his body forming a half circle around the fur. Then the fur shifted and gave a couple of plaintive mewing sounds, and Sam had to revise his first thought. A closer look at the pile had him revising his second thought from "kittens" to "tiger cubs", which made even less sense than "kittens" had. Still, Sam supposed he could cut Dean some slack this time for leaving him to deal with this alone - his brother's allergy to cats was hardly new, after all - and so he steeled himself to face whatever was going on and stepped into the hotel room.

"Hey, Cas," he said in a quiet murmur as he shut the door softly. "Mind telling me what's going on?"

"These tiger cubs are orphans," Castiel answered, apparently taking his cue from Sam to pitch his voice low and soft. "Their mother was killed by a poacher, and they are too young to survive on their own. Tigers are solitary and do not live in large groups like lions, so they have no nearby female to take them in."

"I see," Sam said, moving very slowly closer to get a better look at the cubs. They did look awfully young, tangled up together. "And the reason you didn't take them to an animal rescue center in the same country they're from?"

"The rescue center was quite far, and overcrowded," Castiel explained, just a little stiffly. "The cubs have already lost their mother to human cruelty and callousness, and I did not want to risk subjecting them to further trauma and potential neglect."

"And the poacher...?" Sam hated to ask, because he was going to be hard pressed to have any sympathy for the bastard if Castiel's righteous fury had manifested itself over this, but better to cover all the bases. As anti-conflict as the angel had become, he didn't think it would be too bad. 

"He was not a demon, so I did not smite him," Castiel replied. "I did, however, disable his vehicle and alert the authorities to his location before bringing the cubs here."

"Good," Sam said, nodding in agreement. As personally satisfying as it might have been to hear that Castiel  _ had  _ smote the poacher, he couldn't fault the angel's choice. The beaming smile Castiel sent him for the implied praise made Sam hate himself for having to add apologetically, "You... do know we can't keep them, right?"

"I am aware," Castiel intoned, looking down at the cubs. "They are wild creatures, and would not thrive as they should living in hotel rooms. But Sam," he went on earnestly, turning pleading blue eyes up to Sam, "they cannot survive on their own."

_ Pretty sure Dean won't survive their presence,  _ Sam thought to himself. If his brother was beating a hasty retreat at the cubs being in the hotel room, there was no way that he would let them into the Impala. More gently, he said, "We're not qualified to take care of baby tigers, though. Let me do some research and find a few places with people who've got practice taking care of tigers, and you can check them out and pick out the best ones to take care of the cubs. Does that sound okay?"

"They will be safe and cared for and treated with respect and kindness?" Castiel asked hesitantly. Sam smiled and nodded.

"We'll both make sure of it," he assured the angel, and was treated to another beaming smile. That smile was doing strange things to Sam's insides, so he quickly averted his attention to opening up his laptop to get started on the promised research. "Where did you find them? And when?" he added, since the angel was hardly limited to linear time.

"The Sumbar River valley in December of nineteen fifty-three," Castiel answered. "It was raining, and my clothes became uncomfortably cold and soaked through, so I removed them."

"You brought them back with you, though, right?" Sam asked. Having a naked angel in his bed was awkward enough without the possibility of having to somehow retrieve his clothes from another time as well as another country.

"Of course," Castiel answered, and Sam's lips twitched slightly upwards to hear the tones of "you idiot human" in his voice. "They are hanging in the bathroom to dry."

"Of course," Sam agreed, typing the place of origin into Google along with "tiger care". "You could have borrowed something of ours to wear. We wouldn't have minded." Well, Dean might've, but there was no reason to say that.

"I did not wish to confuse the cubs with too many new scents, and I am already taking up your bed," the angel replied. "I did not wish to presume that also taking your clothes would not be 'crossing a line'." Sam smiled involuntarily at the audible air quotes, the smile turning into a soft laugh as Castiel added, "And the expression that Dean makes with his face when he sees me naked is amusing."

"Fair enough," Sam admitted. He could hardly fault the impulse to needle Dean a little when it was over something harmless. Still... "If scent is the biggest concern, well, you're already piled into my bed, and I don't mind you borrowing my clothes, even if Dean's would probably fit you better."

"I will keep that in mind," Castiel said seriously. He made no move to get up that Sam could hear, however, so Sam shrugged mentally and returned to researching.

The region and time period Castiel had mentioned proved to be somewhat disquieting, though it gave him a name for the subspecies of the cubs, and so he turned his search more towards feeding tiger cubs and how to make some sort of formula for them. This search proved more elusive, but he finally found a couple of sites that agreed on a formula recipe to feed tiger cubs and so he sent off a quick text to Dean with a shopping list, adding "24 Hour Claritin" at the bottom. The text he got back in response made Sam roll his eyes, but his brother didn't say he wouldn't get the stuff so he chalked it up as a win. Hopefully Castiel would be up to determining the healthiest blend of ingredients for the cubs and warming the formula to "tiger mommy heat" once it was made; he guessed the angel was doing something with his Grace to keep the cubs sustained for the time being.

His back twinged unhappily, reminding him that he and Dean had been digging up a corpse not too long ago, with him doing the majority of the digging. With a soft sigh and an even softer groan, Sam forced his body into a long stretch, then got up to shuffle towards the bathroom. He paused when Castiel called softly from the bed, "Are you going to take a shower before coming to sleep?"

"Um," Sam hesitated, glancing back. From this side, he was offered an unobstructed view of Castiel's back and the foot and a half of space left between Castiel and the edge of the bed, as if the angel had deliberately left room for someone to curl up behind him while he curled up around the cubs. Well. Sam had seen less obvious invitations from women at the bars Dean picked to unwind in. "Well, you said it's best not to confuse the cubs with too many scents, right?" he said, gesturing at his still-disheveled state, grave dirt and smoke clinging to his clothes more obviously than the way they also clung to his skin and hair along with his sweat. "And it'll probably be more comforting to them not to have the scents of smoke and gasoline mixed up with ours."

It must have been the right answer, because Castiel favored him with another smile, smaller and softer than the previous two, before turning his head back around to face the cubs again. Sam took that as permission to continue into the bathroom, nudging the door most of the way closed behind him before starting to strip. Castiel's clothes (or were they still Jimmy's clothes, even though Jimmy was no longer occupying his body alongside Castiel?) were neatly stacked on the back of the toilet and appeared to be dry, so Sam left them where they were and stepped into the shower.

Either the gods were smiling on him tonight, which was a terrifying enough thought on its own considering what he knew of the various gods out there, or Castiel was being especially generous with his Grace, because the spray of water was pleasantly warm when it burst from the shower head and quickly heated to just hot enough to be most effective at soothing the tension from his back and shoulders. Despite the possibly miraculous hot water, he only lingered long enough for the heat to ease the worst of the soreness before making quick but thorough work of washing up. His fingers were pruning by the time he'd managed to rinse his hair the final time, and it took two tries for him to turn off the water. He stumbled his way through drying off and only wrapped the towel around his waist from habit as he left the bathroom to dig a fresh pair of boxers out of his duffel.

Castiel had somehow managed to work the covers out from under himself and the cubs during Sam's shower, though he kept them draped low across his hips and folded over and up to make a sort of nest around the sleeping cubs. The other side of the bed behind him had been turned down and Sam slid gratefully in between the sheets next to the angel.

"Cubs a'ight?" he asked around a yawn, propping himself up on one elbow to peer over Castiel's shoulder. His other hand reached out to hover over the little bundles of fur, being careful not to touch them as he sleepily counted off four cubs curled up around each other.

"Yes, Sam," Castiel said softly. He reached up and caught Sam's hand, but rather than nudge him back to his side of the bed, he pulled the hand gently until Sam settled against his back with his arm draped over Castiel's waist. "The cubs will be fine until Dean arrives with the ingredients for their dinner."

The reminder that Dean would be returning should have roused Sam - this was a pretty compromising position for his brother to find him in with their angel, after all - but Sam was already so tired from the hunt and drowsy from the shower that it hardly registered. He hummed something vaguely acknowledging, settling down into the saggy hotel mattress, and curled his large frame protectively around Castiel's smaller human shape. He nearly missed it when, as he was drifting down into sleep, Castiel murmured, "You are a kind and nurturing person, Sam Winchester. Not like a tiger. You would not leave your mate to raise cubs alone."

Sam fell asleep before he could draw enough brain power to ask him what he meant.

 

**D** EAN COULD HAVE done without the text from Sam with a bizarre shopping list right as it looked like he might be getting somewhere with a blonde chick with a dragon tattoo wrapped around her forearm, and the text he sent back expressed his displeasure vehemently. Still, he knew his brother wouldn't have sent the shopping list if it wasn't important, so he reluctantly disengaged from the blond and set out to find the nearest actual supermarket that might have, of all things, canned goat's milk and calcium carbonate along with plain unflavored yogurt and a heavy duty baby bottle. The allergy pills were a little more disconcerting, but Dean gamely grabbed some off the shelf and headed for check-out.

The sight he walked in on in the hotel room this time was no less bizarre than it had been the first time. Now, however, the naked angel was at least covered from the waist down, and Sam was spooned around him like a protective boyfriend. It was a priceless picture, and Dean couldn't resist the urge to pull out his phone and take a couple actual pictures of the intimate scene.

"If you say anything to upset Sam over this," Castiel's gravelly voice intoned from the bed, drawing Dean's attention to narrowed blue eyes, "I will turn your beer into cough syrup. I have been reliably informed that it is an unpleasant taste and will serve as a sufficient deterrent."

"Not gonna upset Sammy!" Dean protested, wincing and lowering his voice when Sam shifted in his sleep and Castiel's glare ramped up a notch. "He'd check me for possession if I didn't say something about this, though. How'd you convince him to get in bed with you?"

"It took surprisingly little convincing," Castiel admitted. "I believe that the hunt you were on exhausted him more than usual. Were you successful in locating the items requested?"

"Barely," Dean said, holding up the bag. "It took a bit before the guy in the pharmacy section understood I wanted powdered calcium. I hope you know how to mix this shit up the way you need it, 'cause I got no clue."

"As I am otherwise occupied at the moment," Castiel said with a bland tone that on anyone else Dean would have called him out for, "I will have to direct you in the preparation of the tiger cubs' formula."

"Fine, just this once," Dean grumbled as he began unpacking the shopping bag. "But don't think-- wait, did you say tiger cubs?!"

**Author's Note:**

> Caspian Tigers, one of the largest recorded subspecies of tiger in the world and the subspecies to which Castiel's rescuees belong, have been considered extinct since the 1970s; Bali Tigers are considered extinct since the 1930s; Javan Tigers have only been considered extinct since the 1980s. The six remaining subspecies (Siberian, Bengal, Malayan, Indochinese, South China, and Sumatran) range from endangered to critically endangered. For more information on tigers and tiger conservation efforts, go to [Tigers In Crisis](http://www.tigersincrisis.com/).


End file.
